Mini-Review: Trying To Get the Most out of the 7D High ISO Images

Thanks i'm still experimenting with Lightroom.

Ziffle wrote in post #12955481
paparios,
your shot is under exposed.
if you push your exposure at least 1/2 stop (in camera) - your shot and noise will be better controlled.

this is even before you get to HTTR.

personally been using LR for the last 3 years for wedding work and personal stuff.
LR3 is at the point where i did not need a third party noise reduction.

Thanks. Here is the LR3.4.1 screen of the picture. The adjustment are what LR offers as default, with the following changes from my part:

WB adjustment (2650, +5)
Exposure: raised +0.3 stops
Sharpening: reduced to 0
Color NR: luminance 65

Miguel

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paparios wrote in post #12956438
Thanks. Here is the LR3.4.1 screen of the picture. The adjustment are what LR offers as default, with the following changes from my part:

WB adjustment (2650, +5)
Exposure: raised +0.3 stops
Sharpening: reduced to 0
Color NR: luminance 65

Miguel

In the case some of you might want to contribute with your own expertise in PP, I have placed a group of original ISO12800 RAW files (both for the 7D and the 50D) for downloading, in the following link http://web.ing.puc.cl/​~mrios/imagenes/high-iso-raw/

Miguel

Paparios,
not sure if you stated in an earlier post.... but RAW need sharpening.

so sharpen first and then apply the noise reduction.

Sharpening: (i have different sharpening for different situations)
start with the last slider - mask. try about 75

the 4 value from top to bottom:
85
1.4
20
75

with this setting - you are applying a mask and eliminating a lot of flat surfaces.
You can hold you Alt key (not sure Mac key) as you select the slide. as you move left/right you will see the amount of sharpening. anything that is white is going to be sharpened.


Your top slider should be about the same or a little less than you mask as a general rule.

after this, move the luminous slider between 20 & 30 (under Noise reduction).

Hope this helps.
With this setting you will have good general sharpening for people. my portrait setting are different than this.


I learned this from Martin Evening's book on LR. He was on the design team for LR.
The sharpening is the same algorithm used in Photoshop. It has been tweaked or further optimized from previous releases.
-Mark

excellent

Ziffle wrote in post #12961421
Paparios,
not sure if you stated in an earlier post.... but RAW need sharpening.

so sharpen first and then apply the noise reduction.

Sharpening: (i have different sharpening for different situations)
start with the last slider - mask. try about 75

the 4 value from top to bottom:
85
1.4
20
75

with this setting - you are applying a mask and eliminating a lot of flat surfaces.
You can hold you Alt key (not sure Mac key) as you select the slide. as you move left/right you will see the amount of sharpening. anything that is white is going to be sharpened.


Your top slider should be about the same or a little less than you mask as a general rule.

after this, move the luminous slider between 20 & 30 (under Noise reduction).

Hope this helps.
With this setting you will have good general sharpening for people. my portrait setting are different than this.


I learned this from Martin Evening's book on LR. He was on the design team for LR.
The sharpening is the same algorithm used in Photoshop. It has been tweaked or further optimized from previous releases.
-Mark

Thank you for your tips. However, for ISO6400 to ISO12800 shots, applying sharpening does produce some artifacts that I don't like. Here are two 100% crops of the girl picture. The first is with your sharpening recommendation, while the second is with 0 sharpening applied. In my opinion, no sharpening gives better results for this example.

Miguel

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paparios wrote in post #12962242
Thank you for your tips. However, for ISO6400 to ISO12800 shots, applying sharpening does produce some artifacts that I don't like. Here are two 100% crops of the girl picture. The first is with your sharpening recommendation, while the second is with 0 sharpening applied. In my opinion, no sharpening gives better results for this example.

Miguel

Furthermore, when looking at normal size (or for printing), it is difficult to see a big difference with the applied sharpening. The first picture is with your sharpening recommendation, while the second is without any sharpening.

Miguel

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When you are in the digital realm ... you are limited to your screen.

Start printing and at fairly large sizes and you will see a difference.

Ziffle wrote in post #13001649
When you are in the digital realm ... you are limited to your screen.

Start printing and at fairly large sizes and you will see a difference.

Actually using the screen as a loupe means that if images look decent at nearly 80-100% viewing, large prints will look great. Sure, only posting resized images only would validate your statement but many are willing to post their crops too.

Being able to segregate areas for sharpening from areas for NR is one of the reasons having masking as an option in PPing.

Ziffle wrote in post #12961421
so sharpen first and then apply the noise reduction.

Really, how do you do that in Lightroom ?

I mean, sharpening and noise reduction are just different settings in LR. I am not aware of any method to enforce the processing order in LR.

Okay, I have a new item to add to this thread to help others. I had completely forgotten about uniWB, and if you shoot ETTR, using uniWB really helps. Just shooting with the regular histogram, and trying to push the curve right doesn't really help if you blow out a color channel. The histogram won't easily reflect that, even if you use the RGB histogram.

So I did a very low light uniWB and ETTR combo with the 7D at ISO 12800 this morning. I shot a black frame at ISO 100, f1/1000, and then set that as my custom WB image. I then took a picture of my daughter, who got up a bit too early this morning and quietly made her way down to the basement to color.

I took a shot of her with the RGB curves far to the right so that they didn't blow out, but came very close. I then post processed the image in DPP.

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Here is a partial crop. Don't expect a sharp pic, handheld even with IS shooting a 3 year old in the lighting we were in won't yield a sharp pic, no matter the camera (well maybe the 1DX).

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Great work!

I my very well be missing something, but bumping up the EC seems like it would be defeat the purpose of using high ISO. Typically, when I choose to increase ISO is in low-light situations when I need an increased shutter speed...however, if I increase this EC, this is going to in turn DECREASE the shutter speed again.